Doggy Paddle
by Alicitzen
Summary: Reborn in a new world, Betty was mostly down to relax in her merchant family until suddenly shes thrown out of her comfort zone and made to take part in the world of pirates she fears so much. (SIOC fic which doesnt follow strawhats and has no romance with the hot guys because thats a bit over played)
1. Ocean Breeze

I had always hated the smell of the sea.

There was something about the inherent salt in the air from the ocean that always rubbed me the wrong way even before I had ended up in a world that seemed to be ninety-nine percent ocean.

The fact that I was now having to deal with it constantly with a more enhanced sense of smell certainly did not help matters either, while I was initially super excited to be born as a mink of things, I had lost that hope and wonder pretty quickly as my parents felt the need to bring me along for their near constant merchant travels.

It really was a shame too, since the sea breeze blowing over my fur was an oddly calming feeling I could almost fall asleep to. Life just always had to be full of give and take I suppose.

Like how at first I had felt such excitement to be born into the world of pirates I had enjoyed back in my prior life, but as time went on I really started to acknowledge that sort of thing really wasn't for me, and most of what I remembered reading sorta just vanished from my memory outside of the occasional 'oh yeah I remember that' moment about an island name in the news.

Besides the whole trading merchant thing my parents had going for them was incredibly high paying. I wasn't allowed particular knowledge regarding what exactly they were trading in due to cries of 'Oh you are only 7 darling you can learn later', yet despite my curiosity I never really ever thought about actually sneaking a look at the cargo aboard the Fountaine, partially out of fear of potential trouble, and partly because holy crap the security on this ship looked like they could tear me in two.

Really the whole staff really gave me that vibe, and given the scale of operation on the Fountaine, there were a lot of people who could easily overpower me.

All of that of course led me to really calm the whole adventure side of myself and now here I was just relaxing in a hammock in a closet turned bedroom. The quietest place I could find that didn't also reek of saltwater.

It wasn't a particularly noteworthy room but after spending years with it being my only real private spot had built up its comfort levels, with a pile of books on the floor ranging from this world fantasy tales to cook books, a shelf of complete random trash souvenirs I had gotten from the many ports we had docked at, and of course the plush shark that basically served as my only friend on the ship.

Since as much as I did in fact care for my family, the last time I had seen one of my similarly aged cousins had been 5 years ago, and I hadn't had any chance to really act my age since.

I shifted awkwardly in the hammock trying to get comfortable.

Right now it was the middle of the night and I desperately craved the sweet release of sleep, yet I kept having a strong urge to get up and just walk. Perhaps it was due to the crew being unnaturally loud tonight, that or the storm that had been rocking the boat like mad for the past week.

After around five more minutes of fidgeting in place I finally decided to actually get up and move, stumbling out of the hammock with all the grace a 7-year-old dog girl can, before grabbing a hold of Mako the shark and fumbling my door open in the dark.

Stepping out of my room and into below deck corridor really gave a massive shift in the sheer audio of the rest of the crew, I had known my parents had went out of their way to try and sound proof my room out of kindness, but until now I hadn't really experienced how much it had actually worked.

I clutched Mako tightly and moved to start wandering the ship, hoping to reach my parents room to ask what was happening tonight. When I heard the first clear _**BANG **_ring out, unable to control myself I let out a startled yelp and collapsed to the floor in panic.

Which honestly probably saved my life, as the next second the door to my room exploded out into the hallway above me. Raining splinters down onto my luckily prone form.

_Oh no. _My mind finally filled itself in on what just was happening.

We were under attack by pirates.

Sure I had always known they existed in this world, but I had had it on good authority that this ship had enough clout that nobody would even dare attack it.

And I'll be real, I may have been scared of the strength of our crew, but my terrible memory told me that One Piece pirates were far beyond mere humans like we had. Since even though Dad was a mink, he was the only one on board and he was a self-proclaimed weakling.

Finally recovering from the shock of my room exploding out at me, I picked myself up and started sprinting my way to the stairs up to the deck, I needed to get to my parents quickly and hopefully before more cannons had time to fire.

Really it made me glad to be a mink in this moment, my natural sprinting speed was higher than average just because of it, so I managed to navigate my way up fairly easily, though upon actually reaching the deck I realised how bad the situation was.

We weren't just under attack.

We were under complete siege.

It was always something I felt like a cliché in movies that pirate attacks happen in storms, but the sheer amount of rain pouring down really just added to the despair of what I was seeing.

It wasn't just a single ship attacking us like I had thought.

It was a whole complete armada.

All surrounding our singular trade ship.

I could feel tears form in my eyes as I realised how doomed this situation really was.

And then I was just swept of my feet.

I fought the initial panic down and tried to figure out what just happened when those words hit my ear.

"Oh Betty I'm so sorry to have wrapped you up in this…"

I relaxed into my mothers embrace, holding her tightly as I tried desperately to think about what the hell we were supposed to do, only coming up completely empty. The fact that the experienced crew didn't seem to know what to do though just cemented we were boned.

"What can we do?" It was probably the most defeated thing I had ever said in either of my lives. I may not have had the full childlike view of my second parents, but they had certainly given off enough of a 'always have a plan vibe' that I felt like I just had to ask.

She didn't reply.

Instead she simply picked me up and ran with me in hand to the port side of the ship and just leapt over the side.

I felt the shocking forces of gravity suddenly grab me and I closed my eyes and tightened up expecting a wet landing.

What I ended up feeling was a harsh crash. Confused I opened my eyes and saw that instead we had landed on a small life boat she must have lowered earlier. She set me down on the floor and kicked off from the main ship.

"Your father told me to just take you and flee, and though I didn't want to just abandon him… I just couldn't let you stay on board."

She looked over at me, I couldn't exactly see from the sheer amount rain pouring down, but I was certain her eyes were filled with tears.

"Hopefully the storm allows us a chance to sneak through all these ships…" She took out a small piece of paper from her pocket, "Then we just follow this back to the rest of his family and everything will be… well hopefully it will be better…"

I hugged Mako tight, the rain had soaked my poor shark, though if it hadn't been raining I felt my tears would have done the same.

Losing everything in life is something I never wanted to experience again, and now here I was losing it all in the worst way possible.

I wasn't sure how much time passed after that, but eventually the sound of cannon fire was far off enough the storm completely drowned it out.

But in the end, life gives and life takes.

I was startled from my thoughts as my mom hugged me close, my arms pinned around my shark and between her body I couldn't hug back.

And then the storm brought its final blow to my life.

I didn't even noticed the wave coming until it hit.

Throwing me, my mother and my shitty little plush all into the sea.

All that I could feel running through my mind was one little thing.

That I hated the smell of ocean.

* * *

A/N  
So yeah a one piece SI, how new.

But I wanted to do this for a while and I had some things in mind as neat changes to the flow so I figured why not.


	2. The Greyhound of Basker City

**Basker Island - South Blue  
****B**

**12 Years Later**

I stumbled my way down one of Basker City's many alley ways. I could feel the blood from my most recent battle dripping off me, the sounds of the droplets hitting the ground not even properly reaching my ears.

One of those damn pirates had detonated some kind of bomb next to me and I was still struggling to hear anything that wasn't the piercing ringing through my skull.

In the past I would have spent hours complaining about it, but after spending eight of my twelve years here on this island fight whatever pirates happened to show up I was uncomfortably used to the sensation of deafness, hell I was actually kinda more pleased in myself for that being the only real 'wound' I ended up with today.

After leaving the knocked-out pirates I was now fumbling my way back through the islands main hub city, a place more populated and culturally built up than any of the other South Blue islands I had encountered in the past. Though I suppose that was to be expected when you considered that this island was the closest port for anyone seeking to enter the grand line.

Which of course meant plenty of pirates, traders and marines happened to travel through here at a near constant rate.

Well maybe more so for the traders and marines these days.

After spending a good year and a half after washing up here struggling to get any food I ended up turning to minor bounty hunting on the pirate crews showing up to restock, mostly getting by at first abusing the hell out of my unnaturally high mink speeds to pick of weak members.

It was a rough life, but the locals and marines stationed here had been kind enough to give me support as long as I managed to keep the collateral damage to a minimum.

I stopped briefly in my alley wandering, catching my bearings. I looked around confirming none of the crew had stuck around to tail me, before lightly kicking open an unmarked wooden door and heading inside.

My apartment here was not particularly impressive. Years of mostly spending time training and fighting to earn a living had really put a dampener on my actual desires to make the place look nice. It was a two-room set-up, and I found myself immediately bypassing the main room and heading to the second of the two.

My bathroom had started out as a one of those classic white tile filled washrooms, however as I found myself mostly using it to wash off pirate blood from my fur, I had redecorated the tiles to be black so I could at least pretend not to see the countless stains I was leaving around the place.

I found myself now just turning on the shower and plopping myself onto the ground letting the water just soak me to the core as my mind started drifting off.

Honestly after that night on the Fountaine, I had expected to find myself never wanting to touch water again, yet surprisingly I had instead found it to be the case that it was just salt water I hated the presence of surrounding me, whilst tap and sink water managed to soothe my mind somewhat.

I stood up again after some time had passed, I wasn't the most certain on how long it was, but the ringing in my ears had just stopped and I could now hear the water splashing off me which I figured was as good a sign as any to finish up.

After finishing up the whole showering thing and dealing with how much of a pain it is to dry yourself when your whole body is covered in hair, I grabbed some mouthwash and a toothbrush.

I wasn't stupid after all, if my body was part hound that meant I had a killer jaw and I abused the hell out of it in combat, a strong bite on a typical sailors are was usually enough to render it nearly unusable for the rest of the fight.

The downside to this I found out early on, was I got really tired of the whole bloody mouth look, I was what seemed to be the only mink in the whole Blue and a lot of the locals had only their imaginations to tell them what that meant, so the dog girl wandering around covered in blood with pirate meat sticking to her teeth really made a bad first impression on most people, and after the first few people accused me of being a monster I really had to try hard to keep up the civilised look.

Plus, the whole issue of torn clothing meant most of my income went all the way into keeping up the appearance of not being a man-eating werewolf.

Finally, once the whole cleaning up part of the routine was dealt with, I finally returned to the main room of my abode. It never reached a level of comfort like my old room, but after a few years of sleeping outdoors I could appreciate the comfort of a room that wasn't likely to collapse from rain, and its location near the centre of the city made me very much doubt the likelihood of cannon fire destroying the place I live again.

Also, I got the benefit of having my own kitchen area to actually devote myself to cooking. I hadn't been much of a chef in my past life, and the time at sea had been very dietary restricting, so I had taken up the art of cooking to really have a workable skill once I finally got back to the rest of my family. Well if that even happened.

It additionally gave me a good position to finally leave this place, a bunch of crews didn't have decent chefs, so my passable quality meals were bound to find a place in some crew eventually. Its just most of the Pirate crews that passed through had no talent in them whatsoever. Like how was I supposed to get through a good portion of the grand line with one of these weak as hell crews?

I just needed to find a pretty strong crew, then try and join in as like their version of what's his name, the chef who kicked, god its been nineteen years and I've freaking forgotten all the actual One Piece casts names. I'd probably remember it if I saw it but so far checking the news the Straw crew still hadn't been making a name for themselves yet, or maybe they had been currently doing so and I just hadn't been able to tell out of ignorance.

What didn't help me much with that whole side of things though, was my complete lack of knowledge on what South Blue crews of note even existed to a scale I could properly work with. Sure, I remembered some character design stuff, but its been nearly twenty years since I even had a glimpse at the series I was living in, how the heck is anyone expected to remember side character trivia for that long?

After internally contemplating my current situation, I did the only thing I could do really at the moment and leapt onto my singular couch to try and relax a bit and let my body's aches have a chance to die down some more.

I didn't have a bed here due to space constraints, so the old couch I had set up for relaxing in functioned as a makeshift bed as well, something my internal canine had no issues with doing. I can't be sure of the exact timeframe it happened in, but I soon found myself falling asleep there still wrapped in the towel I hadn't exchanged for proper clothing in my weary state.

* * *

**Basker City Docks  
****K**

The sight of the pirate crew laying decimated was clearly infuriating my captain. He wasn't really the most level-headed of men I knew in the first place, so seeing something like this probably ticked him off in all the wrong ways.

"One of the South Blues most feared bounty hunters is on this island, _**and she didn't go for my crew!?**_"

My captain was one of those capital 'I' Idiots. "Try and think this through Captain. We only just arrived on the island and they were already long since taken out. The Grey Hound is probably no longer around the docks to even try attacking us."

His only reply was a clearly exaggerated frown.

"She may show up around town later, so we should take advantage of the low marine presence here to get supplies for our passage into the Grand Line. And if anyone in the crew sights her, they'll be sure to tell her you want to fight."

That seemed to cheer him up a slight bit, his frown returning to his trademark grin.

"Good. It's time to leave our final mark of strength in this sea, I'll show the world the power of the Kid Pirates."


End file.
